PIM & FRANCIE GOLDEN BEAR DAYS HC

Originally published in 2010, Pim & Francie is a cult classic and the only collection of Al Columbia's work to be published. Collecting more than a decade's worth of comic strips, animation stills, storybook covers, and much more, this broken jigsaw puzzle of a book tells the story of a pair of childlike imps whose antics get them into horrific, fantastic trouble. Columbia's brilliant, fairy-tale-like backdrops hint at dread lurking under every gingerbread house and behind every sunny afternoon, all told with a wicked sense of humor.

From Publishers Weekly

Columbia's legend over the last two decades has as much to do with the work he's destroyed or never finished as with the few spectacular, horrifying pieces that actually have seen publication. This, his first book, makes a point of being unfinished and unfinishable. These aren't actually stories about Pim and Francie, a pair of little-kid characters (drawn in a vintage animation style) who are perpetually stumbling into ghastly, wrenchingly violent scenarios: they're mangled fragments of stories, closeups of incomplete comics pages and animation storyboards, stained and crumpled sketches and notes. The book's spine calls its contents artifacts and bone fragments, as if they're what's left for a forensic scientist to identify after a brutal murderer has had his way with them; Columbia obsessively returns to images of bloody bloody killers. (His cartoon shorthand for destruction is a human tornado with lots of bent arms holding knives at daffy angles.) Many of the pieces are just one or two drawings, as if they've been reduced to the moment when an idyllic piece of entertainment goes hideously awry. But they're also showcases for Columbia's self-frustrating mastery: his absolute command of the idiom of lush, old-fashioned cartooning, and the unshakable eeriness of his visions of horror. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Pim and Francie are a boy and a girl right out of early animation: crisply drawn in a handful of stock positions, with big shoes and three-fingered gloves, and usually identically posed when shown together, except when one or the other is in a chopped-up state. Chopped-up? Well, their grandpa and grandma as well as the Bloody Bloody Killer often turn up flourishing big knives and straight razors. This is all done in black and white, of course, like the early, silent, deadly Felix the Cat cartoons, and also in various apparent states of wear, tear, and draftsmanship (penciled, inked, half-inked, overlaid, palimpsest). Only vaguely narrative, nightmarish, but fascinating, especially for connoisseurs of pure cartooning. --Ray Olson

Booklist

"[F]ascinating, especially for connoisseurs of pure cartooning."

Molly Young, We Love You So

"The twisted narratives and characters are presented so deftly―with such humor and visual panache―that their wrongness becomes right; and thus is the singular charm of Al Columbia."

Rachel Molino, Wizard

"Capable of rendering tight, stark, shudder-inducing figures, the horror-themed work of Al Columbia is some of the most ravenously fan awaited in the indie scene…disarmingly comfortable and sinister."

Graphic Novel Reporter

"A lavishly produced portal into the fantastic and frightful world of Pim & Francie. This gorgeous grimoire is part alchemy, part art book, part storybook, part comic book, and part conceptual art from the pen of Al Columbia, a longtime fan favorite contributor to comics anthologies like Zero Zero, Blab!, and, more recently, MOME....Never have such colorful, imaginative vistas instilled such an atmosphere of dread, and with such a wicked sense of humor."

Rachael M. Rollson, Panel to Panel

"Al decided to dredge up old ghosts, unfinished pieces, trifles he had thrown away then reconsidered and offered them up to us as proof that he hasn’t forgotten us. This 240-page book has certainly filled in some gaps for me as to what goes on in Columbia’s mind... There seems to be something both amazing and horrifying around every corner, in any dark space, in the thick of the forest, in the bulbous eyes of maniacal creatures and the straight realistic lines of buildings that all have a dark window somewhere... It is truly a viscous treat and I am sure this one will never wash off."

Brian Heater, The Daily Cross Hatch

"Pim & Francie: The Golden Bear Days is a downright sadistic journey through the lives of its titular characters... The book succeeds rather well as both an introduction to the artist’s work and as a standalone art book. It’s simultaneously lush and sparse and terrifying and wonderful."

Martyn Pedler, Bookslut

"[T]here’s one reason why Pim & Francie pulls off the unlikely feat of being more than the sum of its fragmented, disconnected, half-inked parts: it’s terrifying. ... The book... hangs in your head long after you close your eyes."

The Onion A.V. Club

"There are no explanations here, and few conventional payoffs ― just images designed to remind readers what it was like to be a panicked, paranoid child, convinced that every nighttime shadow contained a beast more menacing and repulsive than any grown-up could conceive. [Grade] B+."

Paul Gravett

"These distressed, distressing comics and illustrations repeat and escalate like a stuck record or never waking from a recurring nightmare."

Mario Z. Alipio, The Truth About Comics

"Gorgeously reproduced ― rough pencil marks, taped edges, discolorations, and all ― this might be the sweetest thing to stare at, dumbly, in my whole library."

Tim Kreider, The Comics Journal

"It’s possible to piece together narratives from the fragments here, the way you might reconstruct a crime scene from bits of evidence, or a nightmare from fading details. These stories may even be all the more potent for having to be inferred, like the phantasms we imagine when we listen to horror stories on the radio."

Rich Kreiner, The Comics Journal

"This is visceral, elemental terror that generally festers below ― or alongside invisibly ― human reckoning. ... Frontwards, backways, sneak-a-peek sideways, it all packs a monumentally disturbing wallop."

About the Author

Al Columbia is a "cult" comics figure, whose work has appeared in several Fantagraphics anthologies and series. Columbia’s work has also been published in Smoke Signals, The Best American Comics, and Juxtapoz magazine. He lives in Connecticut.

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